“We’ll see! We’ll see!” he said, smiling. “It will depend on yourself, and if you are willing to study.”
“I’ll sit up all night long and study,” I assured him.
“The worst thing you could do,” he answered. “We want to save these peaches,” and he pinched my cheek.
Mr. Davis did lots of things that in other men would have been offensive. He always treated the girls as if they were children. People in Montreal thought him “sissified,” but I am glad there are some men more like the gentler sex.
So I began to take lessons in elocution, and dramatic art. Oh! but I was a happy girl in those days. It is true, Mr. Davis was very strict, and he would make me go over lines again and again before he was satisfied, but when I got them finally right and to suit him, he would rub his hands, blow his nose and say:
“Fine! Fine! There’s the real stuff in you.”
And what with Nora crying with sympathy and excitement.
He once said that I was the only pupil he had who had an atom of promise in her. He declared Montreal peculiarly lacking in talent of that sort, though he said he had searched all over the place for even a “spark of fire.” I, at least, loved the work, was deadly in earnest and, finally, so he said, I was pretty, and that was something.